Tag Archives: guitar tuition

Engaging Ear Training Lesson for All Ages of Guitar Students

Posted on by

Rethinking Scale Practice

When I was a music student at Boston’s Berklee college of music one of the brilliant and legendary guitar teachers in town was Mick Goodrick, who was an amazing guitarist and super nice guy. You may be familiar with his extraordinary and highly recommended book, The Advancing Guitarist.

The Advancing Guitarist: Highly Recommended & Enlightening

The Advancing Guitarist: Highly Recommended & Enlightening

Among the many brilliant ideas that Mick has come up with is the idea of playing scales using only one string. From the standpoint of a serious guitar student this obvious and common sense idea seems quite novel and groundbreaking because we are inculcated into the world of position playing as soon as we begin to study.  I found this approach and interesting way to break myself out of ruts but also a very valuable one when teaching beginning guitar students. I liked it so much that I wrote about it in my level I guitar book entitled Guitar Buddy, my treatment of this concept as it appears in my book is just below.

Guitar Buddy by Karl Aranjo. Ear Training Lesson

Guitar Buddy by Karl Aranjo. Ear Training Lesson

When a scale is thought of in this way the formula for the major scale is clearly evident and teaching any guitar student the major scale is very easy.  I also found this approach to be the perfect vehicle for ear training; my students take to this approach like a duck takes to water regardless of their experience, age or ability.  It’s a great way of thinking; it breaks ruts and is logical and liberating.

Ear Training Puzzles

In my approach I begin with studying common knowledge melodies such as nursery rhymes, classical themes or Christmas carols.  My first step is to present them with the drawing of the first phrase of the melody; I call this the shape of the melody -using it to give the student the general overall idea of a songs melodic motion.   Below is the printed material I use for and ear training lesson, I call this my page of puzzles which effectively serves to pique someone’s interest.

All Students Find This To Be A Fun And Thought Provoking Challenge

All Students Find This To Be A Fun And Thought Provoking Challenge

Making Students Think Is Fun For You!

Finally I told the student to complete the melody using only notes found in the major scale, many students quickly make the realization that a melody is nothing more than a mixed up scale. Finally I discussed the law of melody on law of step-wise which states that the most melodies scale tones are drawn to their step-wise neighbors. This simple ear training lesson is very enjoyable with most of my students eager to take the challenge and solve puzzles. As younger students like consistency and repetitive rituals and interesting drills and exercises, this simple ear training is another great tool for your arsenal.

The Sanity of Starting an Impossible Business with the Odds Stacked Against You

Posted on by

My Calling

I have had a long career doing professional music, nothing in the big time showbiz vein but I’ve made a great living writing guitar books, teaching guitar and of course performing on the general business level of music, private parties and nightclubs, restaurants and hotels. In fact, when I first left Berklee College of Music and was able to make a living with my guitar I felt like I had really made the big time anyway, and although I had aspirations of fame and fortune I found that I really loved teaching and sharing my knowledge, so all my dreams of writing hot guitar records and film scoring seemed secondary and unimportant next to this passion for sharing, helping and teaching -seemed silly next to the kids I was helping and dreams I was keeping alive.

confusedGIT

Feeling Completely Alone With My New Start Up

Bedroom Tears

When I was a boy, trying to learn guitar my mother said I would sit on of my bed and cry because I couldn’t figure out how to play the Beatles and Chuck Berry. I also listened to guitar records interminably that I found in the family junk shop, lots and lots of them -stuff like surf music, Les Paul, “101 Guitars” and “Romantic Guitars”, fluff that the record companies were cranking out in the 50’s and 60’s.

In those days, there was very little for a person who wanted to learn the instrument: no Internet, hardly any good books and very few qualified teachers and no teachers my family could afford. I had to learn by listening, watching and talking to people and believe me, my study of the guitar was 24/7 365.  Nonetheless, I was going nowhere fast even though I could get the occasional gig and was always respected in any musical circle I entered into, I knew what was possible, I knew what I had and  what I wanted and there was no way I was getting there teaching myself.

I was particularly frustrated with the lack of meaningful  educational material available to me in those early day.

Berklee College of Music

After spending my 20s playing in rock bands and learning to write songs, an old family friend an icon of jazz guitar named Tony Mottola encouraged me to go to Berklee School of Music in Boston.  It was the best advice I ever got, because the very moment I walked in the door I met and befriended the greatest guitar teacher to have ever lived, William G. Leavitt creator of the Berklee method. For some reason which is still unknown to me within about 10 min. of that meeting I became his adopted son and although I was the worst guitarist to ever enroll in Berklee, he dedicated incredible amounts of time, effort and energy to me, teaching me that anyone can excel in their desired endeavors if they’re given a chance.  During my time with Bill, I decided I wanted to follow in his footsteps to carry out his work and become a great educator. He really was my 2nd father.

Bill

Fly By Night Get Rich Quick Schemes

I fell in love with music education and learning because of the many great teachers I found at music schools, even the grizzled old burned out veteran teachers, still had the passion and the love of sharing, they were all easy marks for free lessons and invaluable insights.  I often wondered about and felt for all the people who wanted to go to music school but couldn’t get there -it’s ridiculously expensive, time-consuming, competitive and you have to leave home for a strange city.  So many people would relish this guitar experience and such high quality information, so many who deserve it, but because of the barriers to an electric guitar higher education I came to believe there were relatively few who could experience it.

I began working for a former teacher from the college who shared my viewpoint.  My new employer was long on cryptic talk, pedantic riddles and pseudo Socratic mind games and convinced me he had all the answers. It took me about a year to figure it out it was a fly-by-night get-rich-quick scheme, a scam with absolutely no thought or regard for the user just a desire to cash in on his reputation and resume. Some of our material was nothing more than the outstanding assignments and term papers of former Berklee students! Needless to say his education business, with very little real or valuable information, was a big failure and remains so to this day.

When I left his employ I moved to California and I started my education anew studying with all the most famous guitar teachers in the Los Angeles area like the legendary Ted Greene, Robert Conti and Ron Eschete. I had all the book learning I wanted, I was interested in more real-world approach, based on experience and long successful careers. I was impressed at the amount of original material my new mentors have generated, at the thought they put into their students and although not one of them had a college degree they were some of the finest educators I had met.

How The Heck Did It Get To Be 2016 Already?!

In Orange County, I became a sought-after teacher and I would say in all modesty, a respected author with six books “in the can” (not the trash can thank you). Just about the time I finished school (1992) the Internet was exploding, and I saw the opportunity I was looking for, a way to create and deliver rich multimedia content, to anyone, anywhere and at any time, the barriers that had I been fighting seemed to melt away! I got bored with writing black and white paper books; they seemed inferior to multimedia content.  I begin making webpages for my private students and for my own entertainment, a process which was time-consuming and crazy expensive.

As part of my job as an elementary music school teacher, I studied curriculum design at a local college as well as the world’s great theories of music education: Schillinger, Orff, Suzuki and Kodaly mainly. I was obsessed. I was on a mission. I wasn’t thinking anything about money I was just thinking about those guys who wanted and deserved to go to a big time guitar school but couldn’t get there. I wanted something wonderful for them, I wanted to share something amazing. I have worked on that material religiously, and obsessively –wanting to post a true, on line music school type curriculum, never satisfied with my work, constantly rewriting everything and  learning software of every description, computer platforms and even HTML, it sounds crazy but I felt as if I had no choice, as if someone asked me to do it.

That curriculum grew and grew, I foolishly ignored the advice (and desire) to publish everything immediately because of perfectionistic tendencies and a need to get it right.

Today, my program is about 3000 pages of text, organized into core courses, and scores of separate modules, just like you would find in real guitar school.  I called it ‘GuitarU.com’ and entered the competitive, saturated market of online lessons in 2016, I am embarrassed to say it’s at least 15 years of development and testing because the work had to happen around a successful and busy career I had teaching, writing and gigging –during those years it seemed like a pipe dream because my “web development hours” were between midnight and 2AM.

cropped-social-logo2.jpg

So if my target audience couldn’t go to a special place, like a big time guitar school, I could give them the psychologically special place, their own music school. I still think it’s a beautiful idea.

 

The Old Thinking On The New Model

As I desperately tried to work and develop my program, my life’s mission while keeping my high standards, I saw one guitar education site after another go up on line.  Most of them were a mishmash of unorganized videos, posting 10,000 videos by a thousand rock stars. I love and respect my rock stars but very few of them should be considered serious educators -you don’t have to take my word for it just ask them personally as I have.   In the 80s we all had boxes of Hot Licks and Star Licks videotapes, if that were the way we learn guitar there would be no teaching business, no music schools and no teachers -just video stars. Video education just doesn’t work all that well.

On top of that online teaching businesses try to charge the same amount of money that they would charge you for it one-on-one private lesson -which I think is a rip-off. I saw nothing but money grubbing, selling the sizzle for a steak that didn’t exist. Big time guitar schools will charge you the same amount of money they would charge you as if you are actually going to the school -which you think is a rip-off.  All of these great curriculums are nothing more than a mishmash of videotapes, and some perfunctory poorly thought out text and graphic files.  With one or two notable exceptions, online guitar schools try to operate like real guitar schools, failing to seize the opportunity of true multimedia learning and training –forgetting they need and actual sequential well thought out course of study -oops. This is something I call “the old thinking on the new model” or “glowing books” –text pages in the virtual world instead of the physical one.

The Strength Of This School Is That We Have A Good Curriculum And We Stick To It. –William G. Leavitt, Berklee School Of Music

Telling Me Everything But Telling Me Nothing

Many of my students became frustrated with the most common type of educational site, the “telling me everything but telling me nothing” approach.  This means that the ‘content’ is nothing more than a few low level, common knowledge, over written clichés designed to sell you a self-produced DVD or book, big fat time wasters, the exact opposite of what I was trying to do.

We Will Sell No Wine Before Its Time

Everyone urged me to post but I didn’t want to rush my curriculum, I continued to work on it in confidence knowing that the more YouTube guitar channels, online schools, and book selling guitar blogs that appeared the better it would be for me because with all that unending noisy content, some great and some terrible, it’s very hard to find anything, very hard to get down to work to study what you need and too easy to be distracted.  Learning guitar online was nothing like the experience of having a top flight curriculum to work through; in fact it was a confusing waste of time for the serious student.

Anyone, Anywhere, Anytime

GuitarU.com went live early in 2016 anyone, on any level can begin anywhere in my program for free, when they are satisfied they are learning, they can continue for a small fee.  I also mail all of my GuitarU.com students a giant proprietary full color poster for their practice space. Finally after all that time, effort, money and trouble I felt as though I had completed my dream from all those years ago, or kept a promise I made to myself to follow in my teachers footsteps.  Now I am discovering all the challenges and trials any startup experiences and I am realizing how difficult and impossible a task having a successful online school truly is.  As I said the competition is out there, they are big, bad and capitalized so I must be nutty as Snickers bar, right?

The Sanity Of It All

You’re probably thinking that me, GuitarU.com, online guitar lessons and all my ideas are crazy, I mean how and why would I take on all the big players in a competitive, saturated niche? I don’t know, but I know the truly crazy, the really nuts thing to do with a dream that won’t let you sleep is nothing.  The sanity is that I have a belief in my ideas, knowing they are valuable and can help so many deserving people, believing I have something to add to the world. I know my work is imperfect but is off the drawing board and is being given to all who want (sans barriers), I may never make a dime but I am happy to do it, because it was driving me crazy!

baby

If I Ruled the World, Everyone Who Wanted to Learn The Guitar Would Have To Begin with Classical Lessons!

Posted on by

The Concept of the Concept.

When music educators discuss “the concept” they are loosely referring to the students general overall understanding of everything. In terms of your average guitar student, someone between the ages of 14 and 30, they have already developed a very good concept by being music fans, joining bands and general playing activities associated with the craft. This means they comprehend song structure, improvising, dynamics, and the general musical interplay associated with properly executed and interesting music -having absorbed these ideas through a sort of osmosis a good many don’t need this ‘concept’ to be taught or explained to them.

The Quandary of Teaching Elementary School Guitar Students.

In my experience very few students on the elementary school level exhibit any clarity in regards to “the concept”. Although they enjoy the popular music of the day, trying to teach them modern guitar techniques, songs, and important ideas -the things that make those lessons meaningful and educational such as song form, chord function, improvising, music theory and chord scale relationships are normally far outside of their purview. Taking the approach of professional level musical training in modern idioms with elementary school students has rarely worked out very well for me with of course a few notable exceptions as several of my former elementary school students have become very successful in the music business; however they were born to be musicians.

I of course am aware that many elementary school students are burning up YouTube with Van Halen covers, Django Reinhardt impressions and blues mastery but these kids represent those far from the norm, far from average.  Pointing to children like those internet sensations as a viable approach to music education equals pointing to lottery winners as a model for personal financial success –it can’t happen to everyone.
classic guitarist

Every Student Deserves To Be Exposed To Classical Guitar

Classical Courses Of Study Make Sense To The Young Mind

When I taught general music on the elementary school level I was impressed with the progress students could make when they participated in the band and orchestra program, they were engaged, they understood what they were doing and they were absorbing sound musical principles as a result. Granted most of this training was simply music reading and sight singing but if you’re a fellow educator reading this article you don’t need me to tell you the importance of these two courses of study.

cadences and patterns 2

Classical Music Is A Good Way To Impart Elements Of The Musical Concept To Younger Students

I have taken this approach to heart so much so that I now refuse to take elementary school students unless they will study classical guitar with me first. The results are of this practice are that I keep students longer, give them a better education, they are more engaged in what they are doing and just like all those kids from the elementary school music programs they develop musical minds and a solid concept. When you think about it, classical music is the perfect vehicle for imparting the concept of “the concept” to youngsters because they are learning to be self-contained music makers, capable of playing complete and coherent pieces of music as well as absorbing all the essential bits of music theory, constructs and ideas that classical guitar composers use to do their work.

Call Me Crazy

I believe there is a magic to classical music, it can impart  a sense of beauty and artistic sensibility simply by following any one of the traditional methods currently available, playing the pieces with sincerity and dynamics, and developing a nice little repertoire.

Solo Guitar Playing by Frederick Noad

Solo Guitar Playing by Frederick Noad

 

p.s I prefer Frederic Noad but anyone you like will do just fine.

 

The Myth of the Self-Taught Player

Posted on by

Carl Jung’s Archetypes And One New One

A strict definition of archetypes defines them as a basis, model, mold or template from which copies are made. One of my favorite thinkers, Carl Jung, employed this term for one of his most important and interesting theories. In a Jungian sense, archetypes are differing but repeating patterns of thought and behavior found time and time again across countries, peoples and continents. Like a persona or personality. There can be no complete listing of archetypes but a few of the ones (earth mother, magician and wise old man) that, Carl Jung wrote about are illustrated below.

Three Of Carl Jung's Archetypes

Three Of Carl Jung’s Archetypes

As a picture is worth 1000 words you really don’t need me or anyone else to explain them, they carry their own meaning along and you already know the type of person that each one of the photos depicts. Using your imagination you could probably start talking about each one of the people in the photos, this is the concept of the archetype.

The Self-Taught Magical Boy
In my journey I learned an archetype: the ultra-hip, smooth talking guitar slinger complete with an encyclopedic knowledge of bands, musicians, guitars, guitar pieces, parts and gadgets -an archetype that I called the “self-taught magical boy”.

f I adopted this archetype when I was a teenager and immediately took great pride in the fact that I didn’t know anything about music and I couldn’t read music -wearing my ignorance like a badge of honor. I played by ear and by feeling and I could “figure it out by ear” in any and all instances. I did my best to project a kind of highly intuitive, highly gifted type of person that had the magical lightning fingers and was playing things off the top of my head that were truly remarkable and amazing. Alas, I would occasionally wisely and wistfully comment with a faraway look in my eyes something like this: “but I really wish I did know how to read music” or  “I should have gone to music school”. This was part of my assumed personality, the archetype of the self-taught magical boy, being smart enough to know the value of music education but as the amazing magical boy I really couldn’t or wouldn’t subject myself to the rigors of training because it would destroy all the wonderful astounding things that I discovered on my own and was given at birth.
Of course it was all a big lie and some sort of pathetic ego defense mechanism that I was telling to myself and anyone else who would listen to me play my crappy Jimi Hendrix licks over and over and pretend to be a musician because I could figure out top 40 songs or get the occasional gig at the local watering hole.

Finding The Right Teacher
Luckily for me I found the teacher who pointed out to me how misguided my musical journey truly was, and how everything was a big lie and I really didn’t know anything at all and furthermore there was nothing preventing me from getting the proper training only laziness and my overblown ego, delusional thinking and magic seeking.
This is not a pattern of behavior I invented, it is one I adopted, it is one that was that was taught to me by all the rest of the guys who play their Eric Clapton & Jimi Hendrix covers, figure out songs by year and then we walked around like they were some kind of musical gift the rest of humanity when in fact we were just a bunch of posers and wannabes -self-taught magical boys, boys that never had a real music job.
Luckily for me I had a no-nonsense, tough taskmaster of a friend and teacher who was named Thomas Pizzi. He spelled it all out for me in no uncertain terms by calling me on my bull ship and putting me in situations where I would fall flat on my face again and again.

As a result, I began find and hire better and better teachers and eventually one of them, the legendary Tony Mottola helped me to enroll in Berklee College of music where I was under the mentorship of William G Leavitt himself for six years, so yes I shook off my sad and self-defeating archetype and slowly became a musician.
The truth of the matter is no one is self-taught, guitar playing and improvisation is an enormous multi generational community of which we are the keepers of the flame. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_unconscious) I’m constantly confronted with the archetype of the self-taught amazing magical boy in my teaching practice and although I won’t pull my hair out when someone starts to repeats the tired cliches associated with the archetype I resist the temptation to let out a healthy “WAKE UP DUDE”!!!

music-lessons

Being The Right Teacher
When I begin to work with and quiz the self-taught players, amazingly they will know roughly the same thing, the minor pentatonic scale, the blues scale, a dozen or so iconic solos, Wipeout, Johnny Be Good, the one from Stairway to Heaven and complicated ones like Crazy Train and Bohemian Rhapsody and are usually quite adept at playing and naming chords and can demonstrate a basic knowledge of blues and rock theory -all indications of basic music training.
Yes, it seems that all of the people I meet that are so eager to adapt the archetype of the self-taught magical boy know just about the same thing.

My question is how could they all have taught exactly the same things themselves? The point is they didn’t, you must have been engaged in some form of musical education, either formal or informal, if you can tell me what a C# minor chord is or G major chord is or how to play a C major scale you have studied music but at some point you gave up because it was too hard, was too much work, was too expensive or just wasn’t fun to sit there and expend the genuine effort it takes to be a musician.
When I encounter the archetype of the self-taught magical boy in my teaching business I don’t try to tear them down and make them see the folly of their ways in their first lesson like my friend Thomas did to me -if I did that I wouldn’t have any students!

Defeating The Archetype

The idea is to teach that person with all his faults and foibles, being a gentle and positive influence on them. When I encounter the archetype, I employ process of reverse engineering, and what is commonly called scaffolding. This is where I think of something the person knows and I explain the music theory to them in no uncertain terms, in a way that they can understand constantly referring to basic blues and rock theory and expanding on it a little bit as the lessons progress. Building on what they know, for older students, they have all played Bob Dylans “Like A Rolling Stone”, my lesson plan appears below.

Building Skills By Relearning Common Knowledge Song

Building Skills By Relearning Common Knowledge Song

I never give in to using slapdash hand-drawn material are crappy tabs and I find on the Internet. In my case I’ve written hundreds of lesson plans, published seven books and have a huge online curriculum available (www.guitar.com) but if I find a gap in my material I will make a professional high quality document in tab and traditional notation with salient points illustrated and explained along the way. I always tell my students that I’m constantly prosecuting in the case of musical literacy, while I am also happy to teach you all the tricks I know and basically how to play but my job is to turn you into a real musician.

Many of my former students like Dustin Kensrue of THRICE or Eric and Sameer of YOUNG THE GIANT have found success by embraceing formal musical training, each in their own way.

I have a student who is the embodiment of the archetype of the self-taught magical boy; I have been honored to have been his teacher for many years. Recently, I showed up to his blues gig very early during sound check, he didn’t see me but I heard him going on and on about the importance of addressing the IV chord in a blues number and proper phrasing, and when to use this or that mode or chord substitution for greater effect.  It was like he was a changed person, if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes I wouldn’t have believed it, but there he was giving a music theory lesson to all the guys in the band. It was the perfect outcome and a very enjoyable evening of music.